A Software That Enables Iranians to Surpass the Government’s Advanced Filtering System
For the Hard-line-government in Tehran, which uses an advanced filtering system to censor their Internet, software that enables the Iranian people to circumvent their censorship and allow free Internet access would be a political nightmare. Austin Heap, a 26-year-old programmer in San Francisco says that his new software, Haystack, would make this possible. And if it works, which Austin says it does, the fight over the Internet in Iran will enter a new phase.
Heap had nothing to do with Iran before Iran’s 2009 presidential elections. But the images that came out of the country and the role that the Internet played among those who were fighting for their rights inspired him.
He got his first computer when he was in 3rd grade, started programming in 4th grade (in more than 20 languages). Heap grew up in a small town in Ohio and the Internet always served to connect him with other people, exchange ideas, read and learn new things and was just an endless resource of information and communication, and studied at Bentley University in Boston, worked at a start up right out of college, then at a non-profit in San Francisco, and currently works as Executive Director at the Censorship Research Center in San Francisco. The interview follows:
Omid Memarian: When did you have the idea to make anti-filtering software for Iranians, how did it start?
Austin Heap: Right after the election, I posted instructions on my blog for how those outside of Iran could setup a proxy server on their computer. Within a week over 7,000 people around the world had setup proxies to help people in Iran get back online. This quickly became unmanageable, inefficient, and unreliable. For example, people would setup a proxy server on their laptop and then turn their laptop off. That’s when we decided to try and build something that directly addressed how the Internet censorship is occurring in Iran. The Internet for us has also been something that connects people, not a tool to be used in a campaign to violate what the United Nations considers basic human rights.
Omid: How long did it take to develop your software? What makes it different than the other anti-filtering software on the market?
Austin: We had our first live testing of the software in July of 2009, which was a great success, it’s taken about seven months to pull everything together for Haystack and we’ve still got a lot of work to do.
The primary difference between Haystack and other anti-filtering programs is that the data generated by Haystack looks “normal” — it looks like one is visiting innocuous sites like weather.com and downloading pictures. Most traditional anti-filtering software is easy for an observer (like the government) to detect that a user is using it; Haystack doesn’t do this, it “cloaks” all of the data.
Omid: How can the government challenge the software technically? Can they filter in a way that makes it impossible to go beyond filters by the Iranian citizens?
Austin: We’ve designed our network to work in a way that’s absurdly difficult for the government to block. There’s no way for me to say that it’s impossible for them to block Haystack — if they wanted to block Haystack and all the other anti-filtering tools they could just turn the Internet off. It’s always a cat-and-mouse game with Internet censorship. As hard as we work to help protect the people’s abilities to communicate and seek information, there’s a group in Iran working to make sure we’re not successful.
Omid: How can Iranians use your software? And have you had any pilot tests with those who are living in Iran?
Austin: We’ve done extensive testing for months now in Iran to make sure the software performs as expected. Haystack runs on Mac, Windows, and Linux right now so it’s as easy as downloading the software and double-clicking it. While we ramp up network capacity though, Haystack is invite only.
Omid: How does the software work and how can Iranians, many of whom have dial up connections, download and use the software?
Austin: Haystack was specifically designed with “low bandwidth environments” or places where dialup is still the norm. The software itself is very tiny and has no install process, it was designed to be as easy as possible so users just have to double click and go.
You can think about the Haystack process as having two-steps. The first thing it does is encrypt all of the data coming out of the computer — so even if it falls into the hands of a government monitor, there’s nothing useful in the data and it’s virtually impossible to crack. The second thing it does is hide the encrypted data in what looks like normal traffic, so to an onlooker it looks completely normal.
Omid: How can people within Iran receive this software? Can people download it online and is this safe? And can it be installed from a devise and if so, how is that made available?
Austin Heap: If done safely, downloading online is certainly the easiest way to get a copy. The government in Iran can, in theory, monitor all unencrypted traffic moving over their network. For example, if you’re in Iran — going to haystacknetwork.com or torproject.org without being on an encrypted connection is completely traceable. The easiest way to move any data is offline, move it by hand, burn it on a CD or share it with friends via a USB disk.
Omid: Can you explain how one is tracked if they were to download it online
Austin Heap: Since all Internet communications in Iran filters through DCI (Data Communication of Iran) they can essentially look at each packet that flows through their network and if one is from you and destined to a banned website, it’s trivial for them to monitor that and flag you.
Omid: When did the Treasury Secretary inform you about lifting sanctions for your company and what does it mean in practice?
Austin: Any organization that wants to do human rights work in a country sanctioned by the US has to get approval from the Treasury Department.
People in the U.S. can’t readily export technology like Haystack so without the license we weren’t able to start sending the software to those who could use it. We found out about our licenses for Haystack exempting it from sanctions in late March. What this means for our organization is that we can focus on the technology side and make sure Haystack is as successful as possible in helping people reach important resources online in a safe manner.
Photo Credit:Courtesy of Andy Hall/Observer
Source: Huffington Post
By: Omid Mermerian
Former Member of the Basij Speaks of the Injustice Inside Iran
Today, I came across an interview that was conducted with a former member of the Iranian Militia, the Basij. He was arrested for not cooperating with the orders of the hardliners and refusing to assault Iranian protesters. The content of this interview is distressing and hard to read…for me, it was a little to graphic, but it’s the reality of what is going on inside Iran and we can’t turn blind eyes to the oppression and the struggle that Iranians inside Iran are enduring. We must stop sitting comfortably and begin to think of ways to make a tangible difference.
“On that day it was one of the major protest days on which many people were arrested. There were people of all ages. Then we organised them by age, taking down all their details, names, addresses. They were then held in containers for up to 24 hours before being taken to prisons.
“I encountered 13 and 14-year-olds and upwards.
“With the connections that I had, I had requested a different post. With the history of my activities with them and their familiarity with me and the trust they had in me, they gave me a role there. Because I had good handwriting and office experience I was put in charge of writing down the particulars of all the detainees.
“All those who were brought there were terrified and bewildered. It was a very particular atmosphere. Things proceeded stage by stage.
“The atmosphere was truly difficult.
“With the utmost disrespect and the utmost violence the detainees were thrown into containers.
‘Kids naked outside’
“That night after dinner one of the guys and I went outside to smoke a cigarette. Four of us went out the back. We took a torch with us. As we got outside we heard strange noises. The sound of screams and shouting.
“We set off towards the noise to see what had happened. We saw the door of one of the containers was open. A few of the officers were standing outside.
“We moved towards the containers. We saw one of the kids naked outside. I cast my torch into the open door of the container, I saw a group… this was the container with the underage children that they had arrested. All those under 14 were in there. With my torch I saw that there were others naked and I saw that the floor was wet.
“As I saw all this with my torch, one of the guards insulted me and told me to switch off the torch. He grabbed my torch and threw it across the yard and hit me. I thought I’d done wrong and didn’t say anything
“Another of us was talking to the officer who was harassing the naked boy outside. He said ‘What do you want with this poor boy, this servant of God? How can he defend himself in his condition? Don’t you know God, aren’t you scared of God?, Why are you doing these things?’
“I somehow became involved in defence of this child who they were crushing, who they’d stripped naked.
“Things became heated and we were all involved and they summoned us to the commander. X was openly critical, he was very brave. I didn’t say anything. He was particularly brave. The discussion continued there, that what was this path that we’d taken, that is it an Islamic directive that people’s wives and children are being raped?
Torture and beating
“They arrested me that night and the next day put me in an individual cell, in solitary confinement. It was there that the torture and beating began.
“When they took me for interrogation they asked which group we were in, for whom we were spying saying ‘Who had directed your mission that night?’
“They even accused us of setting out to free the detainees, of setting out to disrupt everything. I couldn’t believe all this. I couldn’t believe what was happening, what they were saying. I couldn’t believe the insults, the beatings…
“When you see everything, hear the screamS and shouts, people crying out for help. Why wasn’t this happening in other containers holding people who were older? Why was the floor of the container wet? We didn’t have a hose there. All this together. It wasn’t blood. All this together…
‘I thought I had gone blind’
“During the interrogation I told the truth, explaining that it wasn’t as they said. But they told me their version. After a few days I realised… following pressure… after the beatings, after the torture, that they what they were after was my confirmation of their version.
“They told me that if I confirmed their story and confirmed that I was spying, that I had joined the Basij with the intention of undertaking such activities and harming the order, that if I confessed and went along with them and signed, that I would be freed. Unfortunately, my personal endurance was not more than this, I couldn’t take any more.
“Their treatment of me… even though I was high-ranking in the Basij and had a long history of activity… I never expected to be spoken to in such a way, let alone insulted and sworn at, hit, kicked.
“The first time they took me for interrogation they struck me so hard in my left eye that I couldn’t see for a while. After the second day I could see a little, I thought I’d gone blind in my left eye. I still have problems with it, it’s never returned to normal. Those who torture you are well built. They have strong hands and strong bodies.
Execution scenarios
“They created execution scenarios. They said we’re going to kill you and we’ll link your death to the protests. We’ll say that you were killed during a protest.
“There was a table on which I stood for some hours with my hands tied and a rope around my 
neck. They came a few times and said they’d come to execute me now, or in an hour. I was very worried.
“Then they came and pulled the table away. I fell. I thought I was saying goodbye to this world.
“It was as if I was fading. When they pulled the table, the rope wasn’t attached to anything. I fell backwards, and fainted. When I came to I was wet. They had thrown water over me. I vomited. They took my confession then and I signed. I can scarcely believe all this now.
“This all happened in the first week.
100 day detention
“I was held for around 100 days. My family didn’t know where I was but then through the people we knew they found me and put up bail and I was released. [They put up [a bond] the deeds of the house.
“I was in an individual cell but they later took me to a larger cell that I shared with my friend.
“I still feel responsible. It was me who recommended him to this Basij operation.
“He is someone whose family for generations had served honestly in the mosque. An excellent guy, a pure, humble person. I thought we could trust him and introduced him so that we would have good people among us. They were giving us 150,000 tomans to 500,000 tomans. I encouraged him.
“He had a wife, he had a child. He changed so much. All the torture, so many beatings.
“I wanted to help him, because I liked him. I wanted to give him a leg up. This was my intention, but unfortunately he became involved and was very disturbed by what he witnessed.
‘Very far from Islam’
“We’re Muslims. Our religion is Islam. We recognise God. When you consider everything, in the end it was very different to all that they said. Those things were very far from Islam.
“Islam had become a curtain for them, from behind which they could do whatever they wanted.
“Directives were presented as the Islamic directives. Everything we say is Islam. You mustn’t question Islam. Disagreement with our directives is disagreement with Islam, in other words disagreement with God. We became like machines. They took away our personal control.
“I grew up in a religious family. As I child I was religious, it wasn’t just since before the elections or during the elections. These are our beliefs. I grew up in a religious family and reached the age that I could understand what was going on during the month of Moharram, the rituals at the mosque. When it came to Ramadan, I fasted. So I wanted to join the Basij.
“During Moharram, Ramadan, in these religious months they carried out responsibilities. When I saw these things it made me want to have Basij responsibilities. I loved Islam, I loved the supreme jurisprudence.
‘People’s organization’
“It’s a people’s organization, a civil organization. I mean I think it was, although now I think part of it may have been the agenda of a particular group. You see it’s ordinary people who join the Basij.
“They enter the organisation of their own free will, because as I said it’s an organisation of the people, people join of their own will and their activities with the Basij are driven by their own desire, out of love.
“In Iran today it’s genuinely hard to find work, it’s hard to get into university. It’s every young person’s wish to enter university and continue his education to have a good life, to find a good job, to have wife, a house, a car. These were all things that they gave us with various methods.
“We felt good, we had a certain satisfaction. We noticed the differences. When I looked at my friends, they didn’t have the car I had, the job I had, the further education I had, that had come to me so easily. All through the Basij. That’s not why I joined. It was out of interest and love, but these were a support. They gave us hope. They were bonuses that encouraged us.
“I think these were things that they wanted to give us to trap us. So that we would be under their thumb. I think that’s exactly it. We would do whatever they told us.
“We grew up with this idea. I joined the Basij at an age that I was like putty that could be moulded. We grew up with these ideas. They gave us character.
Good intentions
“I believe that I didn’t join the organisation with bad intentions. Not just me, others too. Their intentions were good, to provide a service for people, rather than to get a bonus or perform their commander’s orders.
“I believe that there are people who are now full of regret, who are not able to express this regret and they are not able to leave the organisation. They [the guards] called me an outsider. I want to say that all those in the Basij are not bad people. We too are victims.
“I didn’t know the people who tortured me in prison. They were unfamiliar to me. I had come from outside the city. The people in my own town would have been familiar to me. I didn’t know the people who tortured me in that prison. Sometimes they would come with their face covered.
Sexual violence
“I didn’t know night from day when I was in solitary confinement. I was so disturbed that I couldn’t sleep at night from the pain. the pressure and stress.
“My friend who shared my cell created havoc. He’d never seen anything like this. Well, nor had I. He was in shock. He was confused. He lost control. He screamed and shouted, threw himself against the walls. The guards warned him that if he continued with this behaviour they would make things worse for him.
“He was under a lot of pressure. I haven’t experienced having a wife, but he was very close to his wife and he had a small child too.
“On the one hand the deception, on the other the torture he was subjected to, as well as his dependence on his family, all this caused him to lose control.
“He began screaming and shouting and swearing. No matter how I tried I couldn’t calm him. The guards came. One of the guards beat him. His face was bleeding… his clothes were torn off… The guard had a baton… he was sexually violated with it.
‘Ashamed before God’
“One guard was outside, one inside the cell. I wanted to protest, to shout, to help him, but I had seen how they dealt with protesters and I couldn’t protest.
“I am thoroughly ashamed. I’m ashamed before God, ashamed of my youth, ashamed in front of my friend, ashamed in front of the people. I only thank God that during these arrests I never harassed anyone.
“There’s the poem that says ‘Human beings are members of a whole’. My friend, the people, myself, you, others, we are all one. Any one person’s pain can affect everyone, can disrupt calm.
“I have this terrible feeling of pain, that I spent the best years of my life unaware. They used this. I was a tool for them to reach their objectives. I unwittingly got involved in their plans. I was unknowingly led by them.
“Their slogan was that we were the force of the people, the eminent ones, that we must lead. We were unaware of what they brought on us. Our thoughts were not our own.
‘I hate their philosophy’
“Our religion is Islam, others may have other faiths but we are all of one God and that’s what’s important to me. I hate their philosophy, their organisation, their mobilisation, their way of thinking, their mode of management.
“I’m Muslim and I know myself, I believe in myself. I know that they took advantage of Islam.
“I am certain that when the Revolution took place and people lost their lives for it, that their aim wasn’t for a group of people to come to power to govern by manipulating people’s thoughts.
“When the revolution happened… the way I see it, we wanted to eradicate all oppression, we wanted to manage our own military, we wanted to govern ourselves.
“We wanted a government of the people, risen from the people, a product of the people, for it to recognise the people, to understand them and know what they had suffered. Not for their own interests. Not for them to put their own interests above those of the public.
‘I want Iran to be free’
“Life is a right that God has given us all. There must be a system in place for everyone to enjoy life and achieve God’s will. Not just to follow something blindly, but to be free, to have freedom.
“The system should be a people’s system, for it to care about people. All this in a great land, an extremely rich land, for it to have good standing in the world. To be proud to say Iran.
“To be acknowledged if I go somewhere and I say I’m Iranian, to be proud, not hide behind a curtain, not hate my Iranian identity. Not to say I’m Iranian and people respond saying ‘We saw your elections’, or if I say I’m Iranian, they say ‘You must be a member of Basij’, or if I say I’m Iranian, they say ‘You must be Muslim.’
“I want our Iran to be a free Iran. Here it’s a safe environment, but I’ve been torn from the arms of my family. That’s a basic right but it’s been taken away.
“I had been active in the Basij unit in the province, people knew me and believed in me.
“The way things happened, it was as though I had disappeared, no-one had news from me, so they came look for me. They set out to find what had happened to me and this eventually led to where I was held, and they negotiated my release.
“When I got out, I was in my mother’s care.
“I went to see someone for advice. He said there were two options. I could take the legal route and report all that had happened to me, to consult those already active and involved in the post-election rape cases, that they could pursue my case. This in itself was a risk.
“The very people I would consult were under surveillance. If I went to them there was the possibility of betrayal. You have to stand strong and fight to achieve your rights. Or I could go somewhere safe, to save my life for now and return once…
“I couldn’t tolerate any more. One prison experience was difficult enough for me.
“One of the human rights activists gave me an address of someone in Europe who could help me. I got in touch via the internet.
‘I was truly terrified’
“When I was released, they’d told me that I mustn’t contact anyone or tell anyone anything of what they had done to me. And after all their threats I had seen for myself that they meant it. I was truly terrified.
“I had seen that they carry out their threats to the end. I didn’t even go to a doctor because I wouldn’t have been able to explain what had happened, why I was at the doctor, what my ailment was.
“I would have had to have explained what was wrong.
“During this period I had to register with the local Basij unit once a week, to announce myself, that I was present in the area.
“I even lost my job, and all the bonuses they had given me over my years with the Basij, all the letters of recommendation that they’d written.
“They’d said that as soon as we know that you’re no longer active with us we will take away all these benefits. That’s one of the things that I’ve lost this year. Part of me says ’so what, they can keep it’ but then I think I had to leave my country, be estranged from my family and far from my fiancee.”
Source: Channel 4 News
Internet, Blogging, Journalism and What It Means for IRAN
Iran has topped the list, along with China, released by the Committee to Protect Journalists’ of countries that have the most reporters in their jails. 2009 was proven to be the most deadly and dangerous year for journalists, reporters and bloggers worldwide. Things are only getting worse. How can we help? See how touchIRAN is helping free Political Prisoners.
Here’s an article by Jean Francois Julliard about the current situation in Iran and what it means for internet users, reporters and bloggers.
Paris, France (CNN) — Early last week, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameini reportedly said Iran’s celebrations commemorating the Islamic revolution would stun the world. It is difficult to believe anything Iran could do at this point could surprise the world.
The protests after the June election led to an unprecedented campaign of intimidation and arrests. Freedom of expression had been seriously undermined by the regime even before Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s disputed re-election. Journalists and bloggers were regularly arrested and harassed for discussing topics like women’s rights or issues involving ethnic minorities.
News organizations with ties to the reformist movement were fined, suspended or even shut down for criticizing government policies. But in spite of these measures, there remained a functioning press. If reformist publications were limited in their criticism of the government, conservative outlets were rarely the target of censorship or harassment.
This is no longer the case. Any criticism of the government, regardless of its ideological line, is met with repression.
The prospect of Ahmadinejad’s speech last Thursday being interrupted by opposition protesters was viewed as potentially damaging to the Iranian regime’s already fragile claims to legitimacy.
This is why in the weeks before the event, Reporters Without Borders has learned, there was an increase in arrests of journalists and bloggers. The Reporters Without Borders research desk was able to confirm that at least 40 journalists and bloggers were arrested between January 6 and February 12.
Iran has now become the largest prison for journalists and bloggers in the world, with more than 80 Iranian journalists and bloggers behind bars — more than the number of reporters being held in Cuba and China combined.
The international community must now go beyond publicly condemning Iran. As the United Nations Human Rights Council reviews the Iranian situation, member states must make a firm decision to censure the Iranian government for its human rights abuses and send U.N. special rapporteurs to conduct investigations into the abuses.
Hundreds of other journalists are under constant surveillance by the security apparatus and many have had to flee the country because of the threat of being arrested.
Iran no longer even bothers to respect its own judicial standards or procedures. People — journalists and a broad array of those judged to oppose the government — are detained in undisclosed facilities, where reports of physical and sexual abuse are common. These prisoners have no access to lawyers or even information about the charges against them.
One report, from The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, puts the number of arrests in the past two months at 1,000, with people often detained without a reason given under a detention order instituted after the elections last June.
They are often forced to make confessions or take part in what amounts to Stalinist show trials before being sentenced to long prison terms or even death on such charges as being “enemies of God,” “receiving professional training abroad in the preparation of a velvet revolution,” “disturbing public order” and “collaborating with foreign governments.”
The government saw last week’s anniversary festivities as an opportunity to prove it had the support of the population.
So the new wave of arrests was coupled with other measures to prevent Iranian citizens from communicating with each other and the rest of world. Last week, several mobile phone companies stopped allowing users to send or receive text messages. The aim was obvious: to prevent possible protesters from coordinating with each other during the planned celebrations.
Hundreds of Web sites remain inaccessible within the country and Internet connections have been entirely suspended in certain areas. YouTube and Google Mail are two sites most recently blocked. Other Iranian Web sites have also been the target of cyberattacks thought to be linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Iran’s powerful military, political and economic organization.
If the international community hopes to address issues like human rights and the Iranian nuclear program, it must take a strong stand and ensure that all of Iranian society is part of the debate. We cannot afford to exclude or forget those who have been silenced by the regime.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Jean Francois Julliard.
Read More Here.
Iranian President Surprises The World With Nontraditional Behavior
In a country where obedience to the ayatollahs is expected, Iran’s president is finding another way.
Even as hundreds of thousands gathered across Iran on Thursday to mark the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Republic, it’s worth noting that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad isn’t the religious fanatic he is portrayed as in the West. In fact, in a country where overt allegiance to fundamentalist Shiism and obedience to the ayatollahs is expected of senior state officials, Ahmadinejad and his supporters are increasing their independence from the theocrats in both domestic and foreign affairs. The root cause is a struggle within the government itself, as Ahmadinejad and his cronies undermine the increasingly unpopular religious establishment to gain a larger share of power. Even the anti-government protesters help the president when they chant “traitor [Supreme] Leader” and “death to Khamenei.”
The president, his ministers, and staff no longer attend meetings of the Expediency Discernment Council appointed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to mediate between the branches of Iran’s Islamic government. That council, headed by former presidential rival Mohsen Rezai (who reports to the office of the Supreme Leader), had served to oversee the president and his appointees. Hardline clerics and parliamentarians grumble that Ahmadinejad and his ministers regularly defy the Supreme Leader. But having validated last June’s election in Ahmadinejad’s favor, their reactions are limited to blocking certain executive actions like a nuclear deal with the West.
In response, Ahmadinejad has publicly chastised his rivals in the government for “running to Qum for every instruction,” adding that “administering the country should not be left to the [Supreme] Leader, the religious scholars, and other [clerics].” His chief of staff, and relative through marriage, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, echoes those views: “An Islamic government is not capable of running a vast and populous country like Iran. Running a country is like a horse race, but the problem is that [the clergy] are not horse racers.” Mashaei further riled the mullahs by criticizing prophets like Noah and Moses as ineffective administrators akin to the contemporary clergymen who wield power in Iran.
In his efforts to undercut the religious basis of the clerics’ political authority, Ahmadinejad has begun emphasizing “pragmatic values” in governance. When addressing an Iranian university in November, Mashaei took the attack on the mullahs’ authority much further: “God does not unify humans…[because] each person’s [notion of] God varies from the God of others based on individual understanding.” His words, it was quickly noted by aghast ayatollahs, are blasphemous under Islamic law and therefore punishable by death. Rebukes by Shiite leaders fell on deaf ears in the executive branch.
Realizing that antigovernment sentiments are fueled in part by years of behavioral restrictions, Minster of Science Kamran Daneshjou is encouraging attendees at funerals and memorial services to observe a moment of silence instead of reciting the first chapter of the Quran, as has been obligatory. Likewise, the government’s cultural adviser, Javad Shamaghdari, is recommending that the hijab, or veil, not be mandatory—much to the horror of mullahs and orthodox laymen. Powerful Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari even averred publicly in October that preserving the government “is more vital than performing daily prayers.” Being denounced as “heretics” and “infidels” has not swayed the president and his bureaucratic and military cohorts from their increasingly secular politics.
Ahmadinejad’s close ties to the ultraorthodox Ayatollah Mohammad Mesbah Yazdi also haven’t dampened the president’s drive to consolidate power by abjuring beliefs and practices central to the theocracy. Recently Ahmadinejad has even begun rephrasing his oft-repeated statements about the end of the world—in strictly religious terms. In an interview with U.S. news media in September, he commented: “The [Mahdi, or 12th] imam will come with logic, with culture, with science…The stories that have been disseminated around the world about extensive war, apocalyptic wars…are false.” So even Ahmadinejad’s representation of a nonviolent apocalypse serves to distinguish members of the executive office from the mainstream mullahs in power.
Despite strenuous objections on religious grounds from clerics and parliamentarians, Ahmadinejad separated himself further from the mullahs by nominating three women for cabinet portfolios. Ahmadinejad ridiculed his opponents, demanding to know: “Why shouldn’t women be in the cabinet?” In the end, only Marzieh Dastjerdi was confirmed as health minister. Dastjerdi herself provoked the clergy’s opposition for declaring, contrary to Islamic tradition, that women’s rights should be independent from their fathers and husbands. Ahmadinejad subsequently appointed other women to senior administrative posts. “What’s wrong with a woman becoming a governor?” he rhetorically asked an irate gathering in late October, apparently caring little that fundamentalist Muslims everywhere would be incensed.
The president’s example was quickly followed yet again by his subordinates and some family members. Science Minster Daneshjou in-augurated an international conference for women in the sciences in Tehran in January. Azamossadat Farahi, who is Ahmadinejad’s wife, defied both tradition and clerical wish by delivering the keynote speech there on women, knowledge, and science as “cornerstones” of Allah’s creation. Since the recent elections, Farahi has entered public politics very visibly by participating in a meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement and by publicly raising the issue of women’s lack of rights. Not to be outdone, chief of staff Mashaei has been snubbing conservatives by providing state funding to female artists.
Likewise, through on-and-off offers to reach a nuclear deal with the West, Ahmadinejad keeps his internal opponents worried—for such an agreement would ease tensions with the West, open Iran to greater interaction with the international community, and thereby consolidate his authority at the expense of the Supreme Leader and the parliamentarians. The latter vigorously oppose any accommodation with the U.S. on nuclear issues, but realize that the executive branch—which is increasingly beyond their control—oversees foreign affairs. Simultaneously, by authorizing development of enrichment facilities and missile-based nuclear-warhead delivery systems, the Iranian president keeps his international critics in a constant state of angst while partially mollifying hardline critics at home.
What does all this mean for the Islamic Republic? Supreme Leader Khamenei originally had endorsed both Ahmadinejad’s reelection and the IRGC’s influence as means of reinforcing clerical power in the wake of last June’s electoral dispute. But then the Green Movement’s challenge to the political legitimacy of rule by Muslim jurists weakened the status quo. As the people seek a more representative government, the secularist factions of Iran’s administration and military are finding common cause in ensuring not only their own survival, but a firmer grasp on power—minus the clergy who have become the central focus of protest.
As a result, together with the IRGC and Basij (a volunteer paramilitary group that has attacked opposition protesters), Ahmadinejad and his ilk are turning to totalitarianism, rather than the fundamentalism of Shiite clerics, to suppress the steadily growing democratic aspira-tions of the Green Movement. Yet the mullahs have strong allies too, not only in the legislature, led by Ali Larijani (who hails from a family of well-known clerics), but even among the president’s own clan, whose members remain divided on abjuring theocracy.
The Green Movement is most open to rapprochement with the West; the clerics, the least flexible. Ahmadinejad, his ministers, and their secular bureaucracy shift back and forth—knowing foreign engagement is essential but not yet completely free of the theocrats’ yoke. Perhaps the squabbling factions in power eventually will render themselves too ineffective to stand in the way of the Green Movement’s reforms. For now, it’s a three-way struggle for the future of freedom, faith, and internationalism.
Choksy is professor of Iranian, Islamic, and international studies and former director of the Middle Eastern studies program at Indiana University. He also is a member of the National Council on the Humanities at the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities. The views expressed are his own.
Find this article at http://www.newsweek.com/id/233423
Iran Revolution’s End Will Be Heard Around World
Here’s an interesting article from an outsiders perspective on the efforts of Iranians inside Iran who are trying to start a revolution…
Anti-government demonstrators showed up as scheduled on Iran’s streets Thursday, commemorating in their own defiant way the 31st anniversary of the nation’s Islamic revolution. Government forces, meanwhile, worked overtime, and apparently with some success, to clamp down on the protesters.
Important as the day’s efforts by the dissidents may be, though, their significance transcends one day, or one anniversary. It is simply this:
The Iranian revolution in 1979 was the biggest event of the last generation in the Middle East, spawning wars and radicalization that have reshaped the region and, to some extent, the world. If we’re now watching the slow unwinding of that revolution, the consequences will be equally momentous.
To be sure, this is a long-term question, not a short-term one. Iran’s Islamic government in its current form is well-entrenched, and the Revolutionary Guards that sustain it are by far the country’s most powerful force. The government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has shown that it possesses the most important attribute of any imperiled regime, which is the willingness to use brute force to quell rebellion.
So it may take years rather than months to know the end result of today’s grass-roots opposition to the Ahmadinejad government, and there is a distinct limit to what the U.S., or any outside force, can do to affect the course of opposition within Iran.
Yet slowly, things appear to be changing. For one thing, the world increasingly views Iran’s mistreatment of its own 
dissidents as a problem on a par with its nuclear program. One small sign of this came Thursday in the U.S. Senate, where a bipartisan group of senators unveiled a bill that would compel the Obama administration to target economic sanctions on Iran at officials who abuse their citizens’ human rights, not just at those involved in the country’s nuclear program.
“The scheme of the bill is straightforward: targeted sanctions against human-rights abusers in Iran,” said one Senate aide involved in drafting the legislation.
Without doubt, the stakes are enormous. The best way to grasp the consequences of a potential unwinding of the Islamic revolution in Iran is to consider how fundamentally that revolution altered the course of history in the first place.
The 1979 revolution was the event that, more than any other, inspired a rise of Islamic fundamentalist sentiment across the Middle East and the larger Islamic world. That rise has shaken governments across the region, prompting them to alternately accommodate fundamentalists, giving them new power, or to suppress them, generating a backlash of sympathy among the populace.
Most notably, the government of Saudi Arabia, in response to both the forces unleashed in Iran in 1979 and to an uprising by Islamic radicals at the Grand Mosque in Mecca that same year, granted new power, money and freedom to the kingdom’s conservative clerical establishment. That allowed the most conservative elements of the Saudi theocracy to better spread their fundamentalist philosophy not just within the country, but to places such as Pakistan and Yemen as well, sowing the seeds for troubles that continue to erupt.
The rise of Islamic power in Iran also led both the U.S. and rich Arab states to bulk up Saddam Hussein in next-door Iraq as a bulwark against the spread of Iranian-style revolution. This empowering of Iraq led to the massively destructive and expensive eight-year Iran-Iraq war—and also to the cultivation of a monster in Saddam Hussein that took two more wars to eliminate.
Further abroad, the Iranian revolution led directly to t
he creation of the Hezbollah armed Islamic movement in Lebanon, which has become a military threat to Israel more real than that posed by any surrounding Arab state. Iran’s revolutionary government also has provided at least inspiration, and some funding, over the years to Hamas, which has undermined the secular Palestinian movement in the Gaza Strip and threatened it in the West Bank.
More broadly, it’s not a stretch to say that the rise of Iranian-inspired fundamentalist sentiment in the region led to the growth of the al Qaeda extremist movement. Direct relations between Iran and al Qaeda have ranged from distant to hostile over the years, because the former is a Shiite Muslim state and the latter a Sunni Muslim-dominated Islamic movement. Still, the U.S. government’s official commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks reported at least some minor Iranian assistance to various players in the plot.
The point is this: Imagine a world in which an unwinding of Iran’s regime produced an unwinding of all those ripple effects.
Of course, even the leaders of the Iranian opposition don’t want to actually undo the Islamic revolution, but rather to reform and democratize it, raising questions about how much would really change if they succeed.
Yet the question for U.S. policy makers increasingly will be whether it is realistic or mere wishful thinking to suppose Iran’s opposition can persist and grow. Put another way, what matters most right now isn’t precisely how many demonstrators turned out in the streets of Tehran on Thursday, but whether the tide of history has turned against the Islamic government of Iran, at least in the form it has taken for the past 31 years.
—Write to Gerald F. Seib at jerry.seib@wsj.comPrinted in The Wall Street Journal, page A2
Original Article Here
Iran Obstructs All Links To The Outside World As 22 Bahman Approaches
Iranian authorities have imposed a virtual information blockade after opposition leaders issued a call for supporters to take to the streets during an important government anniversary on Thursday, people inside the country are saying.
Residents of the Iranian capital said Wednesday that text messages on many messaging services have been blocked and Internet speeds have slowed to a crawl.
The Internet “comes on only a few minutes each day, but you never know when,” one Iranian wrote in an e-mail to CNN, which he said took seven hours to send. “This has been going on for more than four days now. I contacted my Internet provider and they said it is out of their control.”
More ominously, human rights groups and opposition Web sites have reported widespread arrests targeting journalists.
According to the Paris-based journalism watchdog Reporters Without Borders, at least eight journalists were arrested Sunday and Monday, bringing the total number of reporters now in prison to at least 65.
“They have arrested everybody,” said Nooshabeh Amiri, a journalist who fled Iran five years ago and now writes for the Persian Web site Rooz online from exile in Paris. Amiri said some of her former colleagues are trying to flee Iran.
“Just this morning I helped somebody leave through Iraq,” she said.
Meanwhile, Iranian security officers have put out a steady drumbeat of warnings, announcing they will not tolerate opposition protesters during state-sponsored celebrations Thursday, the 31st anniversary of the foundation of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
“People’s massive participation in 22 Bahman (February 11) rallies will thwart the plots hatched by the enemies to disturb the national ceremony, and enemies will have no opportunity for maneuvering and presenting themselves,” Police Chief Brig. Gen. Ahmadi Moqaddam said, according to the state-backed Fars News Agency.
On January 28, authorities executed two opposition activists after convicting them of being “mohareb,” or enemies of God.
On Tuesday, a court sentenced another activist to death. At least 10 opposition members now await execution.
“Our phones are strictly followed and controlled,” said one young Iranian who participated in past protests, during a phone conversation from Tehran. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the Iranian said that for the first time the satellite television signals in his neighborhood had been jammed.
Read the original article here
Iran Sentences 11 Demonstrators to Death
Tehran’s Revolutionary Court sentenced 11 people to death after convicting them of participating in post-election riots — especially during the recent Ashura holy day, state media reported Thursday.
Two of the sentences have been carried out; the rest are under appeal, the Iranian Students News Agency said, quoting a court official.
The court said the defendants were convicted of “waging war against God, trying to overthrow the Islamic government” and of membership of armed and anti-revolutionary groups.
Full coverage of the protests in Iran
Anti-government demonstrations began after the disputed June 12 presidential vote, which re-elected hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over main opposition candidate Mir Hossein Moussavi.
Late December marked the deadliest clashes since initial protests broke out this summer.
At least seven people were killed and hundreds arrested, witnesses said, as they took to the streets on Ashura, which occurred on December 27.
The Iran government has denied that its security forces killed anyone and has blamed reformists for the violence.
Source: CNN
After 74 Years of Struggle, Iranian Women Are Still Searching For Freedom Of Dress
*Due to circumstances in Iran, this writer has chosen to write anonymously.
The contention over hijab in Iran has deep historical roots and is tied to more fundamental issues concerning Iranian women’s right to free choice and self-determination. The incident that took place on January 7th, 1929 can be counted as one of the most tumultuous events in Iran’s contemporary history. Indeed, the attendance of Reza Shah along with his unveiled wife and daughters at the graduation ceremony of female students of Danesh-Saraye Moghadamati (Preliminary College) on January 7th, 1929, was an official announcement by the ruling government of its willingness to remove the hijab [modest dress in accordance with Shari’s law]. Signs of such inclinations could be observed with the formation of The Women’s Awareness Association in January 1927; the propagation of low-neck dresses; banning the usage of the veil by the Queen; attendance of the first family with a different (unveiled) appearance in Qom at the new year celebration in 1928; and the Afghan Aman Allah Khan and his wife, Soraya ‘s, visit to Iran in May 1928; and, lastly, some Afghan women did not cover themselves at parties and wore European clothing and hats on the way back to Afghanistan when passing through Iranian cities. These were signs of the inclination of Reza Shah’s court to restrict the use of hijab.Reza Shah took different steps in prohibiting the usage of hijab by women such as approving the unified clothing and hat law including four principals and eight amendments during the senate’s sixth meeting in Reza Shah’s third year of kingship; and, in 1932, stating that “women must be free to remove their hijab and in case of prevention by an individual or clergyman, the sheriffs must protect the unveiled women.” Additionally, the formation of the Eastern Women Congress in 1933 in Tehran, and the invitation of unveiled women from other countries also indicated Reza Shah’s inclination to prohibit use of hijab. Reza Shah established “The Association of Liberal Iranian Women” on May 12th, 1936 with Shams Pahlavi as President, as a new ways to ban the use of hijab in Iran. Next, the Internal Ministry passed new laws on dress codes in order to reach a unified way of dress for men and removal of hijab for women. Then, the Shah ordered his ministers and senators to start removing hijab. Initially, wives 
of ministers, secretaries, lawyers, and government agents removed their veils. Apparently, after the fall of Reza Shah’s government, restriction of wearing the veil was not enforced.
Less than a month after the victory of the Islamic Republic in March of 1979, some talk about hijab enforcement was first heard. The publication of some quotes from Ayatollah Khomeini in Keyhan newspaper on March 7th, 1970 led to demonstrations against hijab restriction on March 8th of the same year. At these demonstrations it was announced, “Unveiled women should not be allowed to enter the Islamic ministries; women can enter, but they must wear the veil. Women can work, but they must be covered based on the Islamic rules.” This caused protests regarding the new hijab laws to spread and become more intense. Some clergymen such as Ayatollah Taleghani and Ayatollah Mahallati banned any violence in enforcing hijab.
On March 11th, 1979 Keyhan newspaper published a detailed interview with Ayatollah Taleghani about hijab. He stated, “There is no force even for Muslim women. This was an advice from Ayatollah Khomeini. He was just like a father who advises his children and suggests to them to follow certain rules”. Publication of this interview along with a statement from Tehran’s public prosecutor who declared that those who disturb unveiled women will be “severely punished” appeased the demonstrations for a while.
But, Ayatollah Khomeini’s incisive speech in July 1980, and the 10 day deadline he gave Bani Sadr to enforce all Islamic law pertaining to hijab in government buildings was a crucial step in the process of hijab enforcement. Starting July 5th, 1980 unveiled women were banned from entering governmental buildings. Although known uniforms like the manteau, [long coat] were not common at the time, women had to wear long sleeve dresses and head scarves. However, the hijab enforcement did not become a law until 1984. In the same year, the congress passed the Islamic Punishment Law. Based on the verdict those who did not observe hijab would receive 74 lashes as a punishment.
25 years after the ratification of the veil enforcement law, Iran’s National Television broadcasted criticism against it during the tenth presidential election campaigns for the first time. Jamileh Kadivar, secretary of Mehdi Karroubi’s electoral campaign on women related issues asked him “Do
you think that the enforcement of Islamic hijab is logical and useful? You are a clergyman. Do you think that the enforcement of hijab is in accordance with Islamic laws and thoughts?”
Karroubi responded: “In my opinion, there are two solutions. First, we should stop being violent since the brutality often leads to contrary results.” Although Iran’s National Television never broadcast Karroubi’s second thought, his first suggestion shows his lack of willingness to enforce hijab. He believes that the force has led to results opposite of what the government intended in promoting hijab.
Even before Karroubi, numerous religious figures, sources of emulation, and researchers called hijab enforcement not only un-Islamic, but also against the Islamic rules and thoughts.
According to Grand Ayatollah Montazeri’s website, in response to a question about hijab enforcement, he said that neither the principles nor the details in religion are forced. Basically, the belief that hijab should be enforced lack religious merit.
In an interview titled, “Hijab: Religious limits, lawful boundaries,” Dr. Mohsen Kadivar, a researcher in Islamic studies, explained his opinions as following: “A sound mind understands Islamic hijab according to two basic points. First, it is optional. In other words, it should not be enforced. Islamic hijab as well as other religious duties must be believed and should not be enforced by law; to observe hijab should be optional. By optional, we mean that if a person chooses not to wear hijab or follow religious rules regardless of her religious views (non Muslim or careless Muslim), she should be able to live her lifestyle freely. However, this is only possible if Islamic law were to be held above civil law. Currently the problem in our society is that the civil laws are based on the Islamic rules and as we can witness, they are not effective. In other words, instead of having Islamic hijab observed and cherished, being uncovered and unveiled is now valued. Obviously, the ones who passed the hijab enforcement law did not have this intention. It is seen even in religious families that females do not obey the Islamic rules on hijab properly. Disregarding these rules on hijab has become the norm in our current society. Not wearing hijab is no longer considered obscene, indecent, or bad while during the Islamic movement and even the first years after the revolution, females chose to cover themselves freely, and being unveiled was considered unacceptable. ”
Abdol Ali Bazargan, another Islamic liberal figure, has an opinion about hijab based on the Qur’an. He says, “The Qur’an has not called for any mundane penalty for those who do not cover themselves. The punishment implemented in some countries is based on the opinion of those Islamic clergymen who want to guide people and is not based on God’s orders.” So, he believes that enforcement of hijab is mostly a governmental issue rather than a religious matter.
Among all the contemporary religious researchers, Ahmad Ghabel, one of the most recognized pupils of Ayatollah Montazeri, has a different view than other current scholars. Basically, he believes
that hijab is an optional act and it is not even a duty. In a detailed article posted on his personal homepage, Ghabel mentions various logical reasons for accepting hijab as an optional act. He does not recognize enforced hijab religiously legal in any case.
Mehdi Karroubi, who mentioned his lack of belief in enforced hijab and its uselessness during his campaign, was not the only one who criticized enforced hijab. In an interview with “Chelcheragh” magazine published in Tehran, Dr. Zahra Rahnavard (the wife of Mir Hossein Mousavi, another reformist candidate in the last presidential election) whose different choice of dress has lead to various reactions, stated, “The Qur’an called hijab as the ‘clothing of piety,’ but this type of clothing, which is the most ideal way of dressing , is formed in an entirely decent society. Why do you only limit women, when you live in a society that has everything else altered? It means that in a society you have all kinds of corruption such as stealing, rape, misconduct, destroying of national interest, and lack of wisdom, but force the women to act the way you want. In fact, in order to observe the society as a whole, we must make all parts in a relative harmony.” Indeed, Mrs. Rahnavard cleverly tries to question enforcement of hijab.
Since 1936, for the last 74 years the women’s movement has been continuously fighting for its human rights. The women’s movement has faced violence in different eras and has fought it. During Reza Shah’s time, it struggled against veil removal and now it is bearing difficulties of the war against forced hijab. But both governments disregarded the right of women in choosing their way of dress and these governments insisted on their manner of dictatorship. The Green Movement, which contains the lively and highly capable women’s movement, in its heart recognizes hijab as an optional issue and fights to claim its demands. As Mr. Mir Hossein Mousavi declared in his last statement (statement number 17): “We demand an honest, kind, and merciful government which is voted by the people. This regime must count the variety of people’s opinions as an opportunity, not a threat. We recognize acts such as investigating and scrutinizing people’s personal lives and privacy, the imposition of religious conformity, the closing of newspapers and censorship of media against our civilized and liberating religion and the constitution which was based on it.”
Source: Gozaar
Will the 31st Anniversary of the Fall of the Persian Monarchy Mark a Turning Point in Iran?
A photo during the times of the Fall of the Shah 31 years ago, looks strikingly familiar to the unrest that is occuring today.
Simmering Iran unrest could boil over with anniversary…
The Jan. 16 anniversary of the fall of the Shah could spark the next round of demonstrations.
ISTANBUL, Turkey — As simmering unrest continues to sweep Iran, the country’s opposition is casting about for possible endgames to the ongoing crisis. Frustrated presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi proposed a five-point reconciliation plan last week but the government appears unyielding.
In the struggle currently gripping the streets of the Islamic Republic, an upcoming anniversary could prove significant.
Jan. 16 marks 31 years since the Shah of Iran fled his country, effectively handing victory to the revolution led by Ayatollah Roohollah Khomeini. Green movement activists are hoping the date could once again be the tipping point, this time for Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
And as the anniversary approaches, Tehran isn’t the only city to watch. Historical precedent suggests that revolutions can start in provincial cities not thought to be hotbeds rebellious activity.
On Dec. 15, 1989, a disturbance in a small Romanian team led to a massacre that became the long-awaited catalyst for the overthrow of the Ceausescu dynasty, the last Communist regime in Eastern Europe.
The protest in the town of Timisoara escalated into the shooting dead of nearly 100 demonstrators by Romanian government troops. Nicolai Ceausescu hurried back from a foreign trip — ironically enough to the Islamic Republic of Iran — just in time to be captured by revolutionary forces, put on trial and summarily executed. This may prove relevant to the current situation in Iran because it shows that a government can be toppled by demonstrations that start in provincial cities rather than the capital city.
“In that case also, most people were expecting things to mainly be driven by the capital city but heroes were discovered in the most unlikely places,” said a Tehran-based political analyst who requested anonymity for fear of a regime backlash for speaking to foreign media. “When we look back at the course of events in a few years, a lot of events like the one in Najafabad that may seem less significant at this current juncture will suddenly gain great significance.”
Najafabad is a conservative Iranian town and the birthplace of Grand Ayatollah Ali Montazeri, one of Iran’s top religious authorities and the spiritual head of the opposition movement. His death of natural causes in December led to the traditional city erupting in anti-regime protests. At least five people were killed in the ensuing unrest and the Islamic Republic was forced to declare martial law for the first time since the 1979 revolution.
“The clergy are generally very conservative and pretty scared of taking chances so it was interesting that Qom flared up as well,” said the Tehran-based analyst. “The challenge in smaller cities is that they’re easier to control, both from a policing point of view but also because the smaller population makes it more difficult for the protesters to remain anonymous.”
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Another precedent was set by the level of violence exhibited on the last Sunday in December. Government forces killed at least 37 people in countrywide protests, the worst single-day death toll since the disputed presidential elections in June.
“It was a turning point,” said Thierry Coville, an associated research fellow at the Paris-based IRIS (research center for international and strategic studies). “The violence of the riots has stricken the imagination of the people and the conservatives and reformists now know that the situation could take a very dangerous turn.
“The radicalism of the slogans addressed to Khamenei shows that the legitimacy of the regime is now attacked and it is no more about the election,” said Coville.
In fact, the slogans suggest that demonstrators on the streets of Tehran would like nothing better than to see Ayatollah Khamenei step down from his post as the supreme leader. An unverified letter circulating on the internet and purporting to have been issued by Iran’s National Security Council specifies provisions for checking Khamenei’s private plane in the event he decides to leave the country. Even after the letter was exposed as a fraud, hopeful Iranians continue to forward it to each other.
At the end of December the Ahmadinejad government appeared fully out of touch with the population when it launched assaults on demonstrators during Ashura, a traditional holiday of mourning for martyrs.
“The current regime has broken the social bonds that tie it to the public and thus is eventually due to fall,” said Bill Beeman, a Persian-speaking Iran expert who is professor at the department of anthropology at the University of Minnesota and former president of the Middle East section of the American Anthropological Association. “Killing people on Ashura is a complete symbolic disaster. Even the Shah didn’t execute prisoners on Ashura — and these folks are supposed to be religious!”
Demonstrators who braved the streets of Tehran on Ashura witnessed crowds viciously attacking the police and spoke of a tipping point being breached in the balance of fear between the authorities and the people.
“What grabbed me was the look in the eyes of the soldiers standing in the streets,” said one witness. “You could easily notice grief, guilt and fear in most of them.”
But the regime still has thousands of loyalists willing to take to the streets to defend what they consider to be a sacred institution: the velayat-e faghih (Supreme Jurisprudent) who heads the regime.
“The plainclothes riding their bikes in flocks of 50 maneuvered like villains out of action comic strips and had sparkles of joy in their eyes as if they were celebrating their authority over the streets,” the same witness said. “It was horribly frightening, they all looked mentally ill.”
The regime moved on the counterattack last week, threatening to arrest opposition leaders Mousavi, Mohammad Khatami and Mehdi Karroubi, and using the pulpit to denounce demonstrators as “apostates.” Pro-regime websites published images of individuals the intelligence ministry is seeking and reported that Ayatollah Sanei, the successor of Grand Ayatollah Montazeri as the movement’s spiritual leader, was stripped of his title.
“After the Ashura events, a lot of people have begun feeling that there is indeed some progress being made in terms of really scaring the system,” said the Tehran-based analyst. “But nobody knows whether the system getting scared is going to lead to them making more compromises or cracking down even harder.”
Is Change On Hand For Iran?
With the people rising up, now is the time for tough measures, not concessions…
In streets across Iran, on rooftops late at night and city walls, the cry now is “Death to Khamenei!” and “Death to the dictator!” There is no question that the nationwide uprisings target nothing less than the foundation of Iran’s ruling theocracy.
After seven months of murder, rape and torture, the arrests of hundreds of dissidents, and a brutal crackdown in the streets, the theocratic regime has failed to turn back the movement. Both the opposition and the regime are on an irreversible path that can only lead to the latter’s downfall. As the opposition deepens and spreads, the political fissures at the top, including within the clergy, will also expand. There is no going back.
The increasingly desperate regime will resort to more violence in coming weeks. The trend was evident in the scale of brutality displayed by the regime’s security forces last week on the Shiite holy day of Ashura. Hundreds of protesters were wounded and at least 11 killed when storm troopers opened fire. But the brute force is no longer decisive or even effective. A video on YouTube shows a young woman shouting back at a government agent filming her: “Take my picture, film my face – you can’t silence me.”
The wheels of change ending the reign of the mullahs’ regime are rolling, and it is a matter of when, not if. As one protester recently told an American newspaper, “At the end, this government must go.”
The battle raging in Iran is the culmination of more than 30 years of a corrupt, backward, financially incompetent religious dictatorship. Tehran’s ayatollahs have killed and imprisoned tens of thousands of Iranian dissidents. In 1988, they massacred thousands of political prisoners in the span of several months. They have plundered Iran’s vast natural resources to sponsor terrorism, destabilize regional states, acquire nuclear weapons and develop a long-range missile program. All they have wrought has brought only international isolation for a great nation.
At the core of this battle is the struggle for an Iran where democracy, popular sovereignty and rule of law thrive in place of theocracy, tyranny and rogue behavior. The triumph of the democratic opposition in Iran will also promptly resolve the current nuclear standoff, reduce regional tensions and address he unresolved challenges in Iraq, all of which emanate from the behavior of Iran’s ruling regime.
It is, therefore, only logical to suggest that rather than offering economic and political incentives to Tehran’s current rulers and continuing with long-proven futile nuclear negotiations, the most effective option to deal with Tehran’s nuclear ambitions is to empower the democratic movement. The key question now is what meaningful and practical measures the international community, in particular the United States, should take.
As evident by chants of ” Obama, Obama, are you with the killers or with us?” during 
pro-democracy uprisings, Washington’s insistence on negotiating – even after all the killings and beatings witnessed in the streets of Iran – are viewed as a tacit nod to Tehran’s tyrants.
President Barack Obama realizes now that the U.S. is at a “pivot point” in its Iran policy. His statement that the Iranian people’s demands for their universal rights “have been met with the iron fist of brutality” of the ruling regime is a welcome, albeit long-overdue, step. It must be followed by other measures. The most immediate is to ensure that Washington ends its blacklisting of the main Iranian opposition group, the PMOI (MEK), as a terror organization. The designation is an inherent part of the old policy of appeasement; the group figured prominently as a bargaining chip in now-failed bridge-building efforts with Tehran. Regrettably, Tehran has used the terror designation to justify cracking down further on group members inside Iran.
The United Kingdom and the European Union have now de-listed the organization. A large, bipartisan block of U.S. lawmakers favor removing this leading dissident group from the terror list. By doing so, President Obama would take a major leap toward standing on the side of the Iranian people.
Other measures should include effective international sanctions aimed at isolating Tehran’s rulers financially and diplomatically. Iran’s people are ready and willing to sacrifice for the greater good. Months before the 1979 revolution, a strike by oil workers was fully supported by the people, though it brought them hardship during a very harsh winter. But those measures need not include money or arms to the opposition, much less deploying troops.
The United States can hasten democratic change in Iran by siding with the opposition, while slowing the ticking nuclear time bomb with effective sanctions. This is the best option for dealing with a regime on a collision course with its own people and the world.
Alireza Jafarzadeh is the author of “The Iran Threat: President Ahmadinejad and the Coming Nuclear Crisis.” His e-mail is jafarzadeh@spconsulting.us.
Read The Original Article Here.
By Alireza Jafarzadeh
Copyright © 2010, The Baltimore Sun
